This course explores health and medical issues from a biocultural, ecological and interdisciplinary perspective, highlighting the diverse ways in which different cultures deal with and are affected by illness and disease. These issues are central to medical anthropology, a fast-growing subfield of anthropology. The main topics include the evolution of illness and disease, methods used to collect data, nutrition, growth, infectious disease and the effects of globalization, environmental degradation, ethnicity, political policies and war on disease transmission and treatment. Course material will be presented through lecture, films, group presentations, and processed in class discussions.

Learning Outcomes

Students will demonstrate their understanding of health, nutrition, growth, disease and cultural diversity through examinations and class discussions.

· Students will demonstrate their understanding of the interaction between ecological, biological, political-economic and cultural factors that affect health and disease through examinations and class discussions.

· Students will demonstrate their ability to apply the anthropological approach as well as methods and theories of the discipline by researching and analyzing health issues and patterns of inequality in access to nutrition and healthcare, etc. in presentation and essay assignments.

· Students will demonstrate their ability to compare and contrast their own culture with others from the perspective of cultural relativism (multiculturalism) in classroom discussions.

Social Science CoreThis course fulfills one course in the social science and one course in the multicultural general education requirements. The guidelines for social science core courses stress the development of the following characteristics of a responsible member of society:• an acquaintance with major empirical, analytical, or theoretical approaches to human behavior, institutions or culture;• an acquaintance with social, economic, political, or moral alternatives;• an acquaintance with major problems, issues, institutions, practices or trends in the social world; • a capacity to express ideas clearly, coherently and grammatically in written form as one component of the evaluation process. This written work must total at least 1500 words, at least half of which must be prepared outside of class.

Required Texts

Dettwyler (1994) Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa. Waveland Press.

Hewlett and Hewlett (2008) Ebola, Culture, and Politics: The Anthropology of an Emerging Disease. Wadsworth.

Class Requirements

Exams: There will be 2 exams in this course, each worth 25% of the final grade. The exams will cover lectures, readings and films and will emphasize your conceptual grasp of the course material. A final essay worth 25 pts will be completed on the day of the final examination. All exams must be taken at the scheduled time. Due dates are outlined below.

Weekly Discussions: Students will be assigned to teams within which discussions of assigned readings will be conducted. Discussions will be conducted both in class and online. These weekly discussion posts will be worth a total of 25% of the final grade.

Presentation: Working in groups of 3, students are required to choose a research topic of their choice and present their findings in an in-class presentation. Presentations should be approximately 30 minutes in duration and should include visual aides, such as PowerPoint. An additional 5 minutes of question/answer will follow. The presentation should include a works cited slide, in-text citations, and any images used should also be referenced (you can include a small caption under each image with the author, year and page number). The presentation grade comprises 20% of the total course requirements. A minimum of 12 bibliographic sources (3 of which may be from the internet) must be used. Students are required to submit an annotated bibliography in October. All students MUST contribute equally to the project; please let me know ASAP if you feel that your partners are not putting in equal time. A detailed description of the assignment will be posted.

Peer Reviews: The remaining components of the final grade include completing peer review sheets for fellow student presentations and the final essay (each worth 5% of the final grade). Peer review sheets will be completed and submitted by the end of the day of the presentation (midnight) in order to get full credit and the final essay will be given during the final exam time slot.

Academic Honesty Policy

Plagiarism, cheating and other forms of academic dishonesty will not be tolerated and will be dealt with on a case by case basis. Please refer to the Undergraduate Bulletin (pgs. 373-375) regarding SUNY Geneseo policies (available through the college webpage).

Course requirements and important dates:

Exam #1 125 10/10

#2 125 11/21

Weekly Discussion 100

Presentation 100 TBA

Peer Reviews 25 11/24-12/10

Final Essay 25 12/10

* The second column represents the points each assignment is worth out of a total of 500 possible points for the course.

Weekly Schedule and Reading Assignments

Reading assignments are meant to reinforce and compliment the class lectures, images, and discussions and in no way replace them. Consequently, your regular attendance is essential for understanding class topics. I will take attendance before class, for my own records, and will take attendance into consideration when determining border-line grades. Keeping current with the reading assignments will make it easier to study for exams and facilitate class discussions. * Additional readings are available on mycourses ** Students are responsible for any changes in the syllabus that are announced in class.